by Matt Perman
At 140 characters, perhaps Twitter posts are just too long for those who really want to be productive. Enter Flutter. Flutter limits posts to 26 characters, thus taking us from microblogging to nanoblogging.
This video spoof on Twitter was pretty funny:
(By the way, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/mattperman.)
by Matt Perman
To keep Basecamp from getting lost in all of your Firefox or Safari tabs, you can create a Basecamp icon on the menu bar on your Mac. That way, you can launch it just like any other program, without first having to launch your web browser. Simon Dorfman explains how.
You can also use this approach to create stand alone menu bar icons for other sites that you use a lot, such as Gmail or your blog admin page.
(HT: Josh Sowin)
by Matt Perman
From the Tools of Change for Publishing blog:
Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch can now tap into Amazon’s Kindle store with the free Kindle for iPhone application. From The New York Times:
“The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.”
Amazon is positioning the iPhone app as a gap filler: nibble on book content while waiting at the airport, in line, at a restaurant, etc., but settle in for deep reading with the original Kindle (or, presumably, the printed edition). Toward that end, the Times says Amazon is using a bookmark feature that keeps a reader’s spot as they switch devices.
For those interested in the Kindle 2, you can also see the Kindle 2 here.
by Matt Perman
This is what Jeff Bezos said about the Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device at a Monday press conference: “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds.”
Here’s why that is a good vision:
- It’s simple.
- It’s clear.
- It takes things all the way: “every book ever printed in any language.” Yes! It’s not “most books” or “95% of books.” To be remarkable, you have to be bold and go the full distance. 95% does not inspire. But 100% — that’s amazing.
- Its fulfillment would be a tremendous service to the world.
Now, here’s something not so great:
Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.
“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
Here we have a recommendation that the kibosh be put on a really great idea because “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud.” This is another example of how innovation is stifled and how good ideas get killed. Sure, there may be issues, but let’s figure them out. Let’s not point to process and say “well, this shouldn’t be done.”
What about the copyright law, though?
An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Kindle, or a device like it, could by means of this audio feature bring great access to books into societies with currently low literacy rates? In other words, such a device could perhaps make it possible for those who can’t read to still “read” some great books by listening to them via the text-to-speech technology. And what if everyone was given one?
Someone could say “well, you would run into problems with recharging those devices because electricity would probably not be reliable or available, and beyond that if the literacy rate is this low, probably food and water are higher priorities. Also, people just might not be interested in that.”
Well, good points. But the way forward is not to then stop and give up on the idea (whether this one or any other), but figure out if there is a way to do it which overcomes the obstacles. Maybe not. But don’t kill ideas too early. At the very least, exploring them could lead to something different, more workable — and better.
by Matt Perman
Here are some details from the Wall Street Journal on the new version of the Kindle.
Update: See Amazon’s homepage for more details.
by Matt Perman
From TechCrunch:
Until today, one of the biggest drawbacks of Gmail is that you could not go through your emails when you were offline. Today, that changes. Gmail is finally going offline. Google is rolling out a Google Gears version of Gmail that will be available to users starting today in Gmail Labs. (If you don’t see it, keep checking, the rollout to all users should be complete by the end of the week).
(HT: Andy Naseli)
by Matt Perman
Fast Company reports that Wireless Electricity is Here (Seriously). That’s … incredible.
After more than 100 years of dashed hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies that can safely transmit power through the air — a breakthrough that portends the literal and figurative untethering of our electronic age. Until this development, after all, the phrase “mobile electronics” has been a lie: How portable is your laptop if it has to feed every four hours, like an embryo, through a cord? How mobile is your phone if it shuts down after too long away from a plug? And how flexible is your business if your production area can’t shift because you can’t move the ceiling lights?
As the article mentions, the physics of how to do this has been understood for a while. But the ability to do this in a way that works well and is useful has not existed before. There are about three different approaches coming to market. Here’s how one of them works:
A powered coil inside that pad creates a magnetic field, which as Faraday predicted, induces current to flow through a small secondary coil that’s built into any portable device, such as a flashlight, a phone, or a BlackBerry. The electrical current that then flows in that secondary coil charges the device’s onboard rechargeable battery. (That iPhone in your pocket has yet to be outfitted with this tiny coil, but, as we’ll see, a number of companies are about to introduce products that are.)
For more detail, here’s a helpful summary from an article at Popular Science:
Scientists have known for nearly two centuries how to transmit electricity without wires, and the phenomenon has been demonstrated several times before. But it wasn’t until the rise of personal electronic devices that the demand for wireless power materialized. In the past few years, at least three companies have debuted prototypes of wireless power devices, though their distance range is relatively limited [see “Power Brokers,” next page]. Then last year, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set the stage for wireless power that works from across a room.
The key to wireless power is resonance. Think of a wineglass that shatters when an opera singer hits just the right note. When the voice matches the glass’s resonant frequency—the tone you hear when you tap the glass—the glass efficiently absorbs the singer’s energy and cracks. Using magnetic induction and two identical copper coils that resonate at the same frequency, the MIT scientists successfully powered a 60-watt lightbulb from a power source seven feet away. The team called their invention WiTricity, short for “wireless electricity.” Next up: sending the juice even farther and more efficiently.
You can also read more on wireless electricity at Wikipedia.
by Matt Perman
You can already access the web on your TV through devices like the Apple TV and so forth, but this requires hooking up devices external to your TV. Now it looks like web-enbabled televisions are on the horizon, as Yahoo, TV Makers Unveil Deals to Webify the Tube:
TV and the Web are converging, but until recently most of the movement has come at the Internet end. Broadcast channels are increasingly putting current episodes online, and U.S. audiences for Web video were up 34% in November 2008 over the previous year, according to new metrics from comScore.
Now the other side of the equation is starting to move, with the announcement by Yahoo that it has lined up manufacturing partners who will build high-definition TVs that will let viewers access Yahoo online services directly from their big home screens.
At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday Yahoo revealed that it would work with Samsung electronics, Sony, LG Electronics and Vizio to build TV sets that can access the Yahoo Widget Channel.
The new service will use factory-installed software and the Ethernet connections used to provide cable TV to connect viewers with Yahoo TV widgets, small applications they can click while watching programming to get news, weather and finance reports from Yahoo.
Another widget will let users browse through photo’s they’ve stored on Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing portal.
Among non-Yahoo content, TV audiences will also be able to click on widgets that access eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, Blockbuster, music service Rhapsody and the Web sites for CBS, the New York Times, USA Today and Showtime.